Combat Girls (2012)

This unlikely movie is a concentrate of all the stereotypes the controlled medias daily feed to their public. Here are some of the most preposterous suggestions it attempts to hammer into the viewer's mind: - The German far-right scene is entirely composed of wild, loud, unreasoning skinheads only suited at getting drunk and exercise mindless violence. Just on the contrary, most neonazi militants are perfectly articulate persons with job and family, apt to argument their political views.Only people with an unbalanced familiar background and childhood problems enter the right scene. This idea is so dull that I won't even expend words to counteract it.By contrast refugees are pleasant, quiet, balanced persons who only come to Europe to be reunited with their family. I once lived two months close to a camp full of this... humanity, and I heartily recommend such an experience to anybody approaching this outrageous movie. As a side remainder and according to official (if well-hidden) statistics, 90 % of drug dealing in Germany is managed by immigrants.The conclusion is one of the movie's most weird moments. I won't spoil it for you, but it serves the director's intent in impressing one more cracked stereotype: people in the right scene live and die by futile, pointless violence.In the final grotesquerie, the dying protagonist devotes her final words to explain how wonderful democracy is. Not only the idea is so trite, but hey - everybody expects people suddenly shot in the abdomen to sputter a lecture of regime's political humbug.The movie is technically well-done and enriched by the two female protagonists' excellent acting. Regimes lavish their best efforts on means of propaganda like this one. And that's what the film is: a blatant, straightforward piece of political indoctrination aimed at slandering the Establishment's political opponents. This movie is pretty everything Western free-thought cant reviles... as long as it is performed by its opponents.

There are movies worth seeing and movies which need to be seen. This is both. It's a brilliant piece of acting by the whole cast, with a stellar performance from Alina levshin, and an understated but efficient directing from David Wnendt. But it is also a frighteningly cold and accurate view of neo nazism. The routine violence and hate carried by these young individuals echoes of all the fanaticism that surrounds us today. It is a very disturbing depiction of how society is step by step going to waste, turning back to tribal models.Despite the fact that the movie gets watched without any slowing down or loss of interest, even if it can make one feel a little voyeuristic at times, this is no easy viewing, don't expect to come out of the theater with anything resembling a smile on your face. But at lest you'll be sure to have food for thought and both a new director/writer and actress whose careers you'll want to keep following.

Kriegerin/Combat Girls is the last film of a kind that has become one of Germany's finest exports. I am thinking of films like "Das Experiment" and "Die Welle" which, directly or indirectly, investigate what lies behind a dictatorship like Nazism and the dangers of falling into one again, which sometimes may seem far away. With this film, this time we are taken very close to the reality of a small (supposedly East) German town where far-right extremists rule the place and intimidate migrants. The point of view is entirely coincident with the main character, Marisa (award-winner Ukrainian-born Alina Levshin), who plays the passionate girlfriend of one of the gang's most violent and dangerous subjects. Her acting is amazing and, as already stated by another reviewer, it brings the film to a totally different level giving it the effectiveness of a documentary. The film is essentially about a girl who seems to know very well what she wants (to the extent that her whole body is covered in tattoos which are also political statements), while in fact some events will force her to reconsider not only her set of values, but also a relationship with a man whose deep love quickly turns into the deepest hate. On the background, there is a side story about Marisa's dying Nazi grandfather. She doesn't want to accept that he had been violent to her own wife before she was born, and that relates directly to the violence she in turn has chosen to surround herself with. A 15 years old seeking to be accepted into the gang is also dragged into this spiral of hate and violence - a consequence of her dominating father - until she understand what that really means. The third girl of the gang is always in the background, she's very passive and hardly talks and shows a melancholy which turns out to be a result of life's injustice. This is in my opinion the best German film since Gegen die Wand/Head On. Both educational and a piece of -literally- screaming art. A must see!

I'm certain this is going to be Germany's nominee for the Oscars.The auteur, David Wnendt, seems to have collected a lot of true stories and pieced them together into a fast-paced, very violent, often harrowing and quite unpredictable plot.Most of you don't know the East German neo-nazi scene. You'll ask yourself if this is really how these people live and talk. Believe me, it is. This movie is so close to reality it often feels like a documentary. I expected to sit in the cinema nitpicking, counting mistakes. I found just one. (A license plate with an "88" in it. The German license plate office doesn't allow that.) All the actors are unknowns and few of them get to shine. All the adults in this story are wooden and almost all the teenagers are idiots. Their main job is to convey total ignorance about the extent of their ignorance. They do that well. Jella Haase is very good.But Alina Levshin is the one who's superstar material. This is her movie, and it will be remembered as her breakthrough. Two of the movie's most memorable scenes are long uncut closeups of her face, not speaking, and they're some of the best acting I've seen, ever.Do see it. Just don't expect to sleep easily the night after.